SVA Alumnus KAWS Featured in 'The Wall Street Journal'

BRIAN DONNELLY, THE 37-YEAR-OLD PAINTER, designer and master collaborator who goes by the handle KAWS—a name he began tagging on walls, billboards and trains as a teenager in his hometown of Jersey City, New Jersey, because, he says, he liked how those letters looked together—has, for perhaps too long now, been tagged as a street artist. Donnelly certainly got his start that way. Long before he could sell a group of paintings for $315,000, as he did earlier this year at the Paris-based Galerie Perrotin's inaugural Asian show in Hong Kong, or float an enormous balloon of his own design in this month's Macy'sThanksgiving Day Parade—an honor previously bestowed on only four other living artists (Jeff Koons, Takashi Murakami, Tom Otterness and Tim Burton)—Donnelly toiled in grittier territory. His work was no less public... (continue reading)